konneh

The Liberian civil war affected all Liberians, one way or the other. As a result, all Liberians have some stories of personal experiences of the war that lasted for 14 years. The war caused internal and external dislocation of thousands of people and so many lost loved ones, relatives, and friends. Every Liberian has stories to tell about how they got caught up behind warring faction lines or made it as refugees in other countries. There has not been enough books published telling stories of these experiences. Unlike Sierra Leone, Sudan, or Ivory Coast where books with stories of former child soldiers and survival of war have been published, not many personal stories in the form of memoir have been published by Liberians. Nvasekie Konneh's memoir, "The Land of My Father's Birth" will certainly set the pace to fill that void. This book the size of about 250 pages gives the panoramic views of the writer's experiences of growing up in pre-war Liberia, highlighting his multicultural heritage of Mandingo and Mano ethnicities; fleeing from the war doomed Monrovia, seeking refuge in Abidjan, Ivory Coast where he met and befriended a feature first daughter of the country's first military leader Robert Guei; cruising the Atlantic Ocean, the Mediterranean or Persian Gulf in the bellies of US Navy war ships deployed in Europe and Middle East, highlighting port visits to such far away places as Jerusalem/Bethlehem in Israel/Palestine; Suez Canal, Egypt, Dubai, United Arab Emirate, Paris, France, as well as "Looking for Fatim Diop in Dakar," Senegal. The book is a multicultural celebration of ethnic and religious diversity which will certainly generate lots of conversations with historical, socio-political, art and cultural dimensions in and out of Liberia. For those who have been following this prolific writer since the early 90s, he has diverse interests as a writer whose writings have been extensively published in newspapers, magazine, as well as countless websites; a

Nvasekie N. Konneh is a Liberian writer, award-winning poet, magazine publisher, and community and cultural activist whose works have been widely published in Liberian newspapers, and on websites in Liberia, the US, and Europe. He emigrated to the US in 1995. Konneh served with the US Navy on board the USS Detroit and USS Dwight D. Eisenhower. His last deployment on board the USS Detroit was part of the Operation Desert Fox, the American-British military operation against the regime of Saddam Hussein in December 1998.